Analyst: Android to become #2 mobile OS by 2012

Here is an interesting bit of forecast from Gartner which to me seems biased in that it expects Android to have a much higher and faster growth rate than other OS. Now, I can understand this if Android was the pre-eminent OS and everyone wanted it. Granted a lot of companies have boarded the Android bandwagon and as we saw yesterday, a flurry of devices are being developed on Android. But, for Gartner’s forecast to hold water, the companies jumping on the Android bandwagon must be abandoning other OS or expecting higher growth. Now, clearly other OS competitors are not going to take this lying down and also given the state of the economy worldwide, the growth will have to be phenomenal in 2011-2012 for Android to gain that position. We will have to wait and see if this comes true.

According to Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney, Google’s fledgling Android OS has the potential to become the number two mobile operating system (behind Symbian OS) by 2012.

This certainly sounds like a bit of a stretch considering that currently Android is operating on less than 2% of the world’s smartphones. However, in a recent interview with Computerworld, Dulaney said that he sees Google’s open mobile platform expanding to upwards of 14% market penetration over the next 24 months.

He supports his claim by citing the fact that some 40 new Android-powered devices are expected to be launched over the next year alone.

“Android rises to number two simply because, unlike Apple, they license their OS to multiple OEMs,” Dulaney said. “They have the number 2 OEM, Samsung, and strong players like LG, Motorola, HTC and now Dell. There are others in the works.”

Combine all the new handsets with the enormous draw that Google itself brings to the table, not to mention the anticipated release of Android 2.0, and the fact that Android is open source and has slowly but surely become more attractive to developers, and Dulaney may be on to something here.